26.6.16

neighbor lady

I have no direct neighbors, but the closest to us lives an old lady, alone with her cat in a tiny house. Her husband died over 15 years ago and since then she is alone. Her niece helps her with doing the groceries and the "Volkshilfe" (peoples aid Austria) comes twice a day to control her health state and helps her with putting on clothes and such things. Every now and then I visit her or help her with feeding the cat, if she is in hospital or can't do it by herself for some reason. She is in a bad health state, has extreme kyphosis and scoliosis, but her mind is very vivid and I can talk very openly with her. I admire how she keeps being so cheerful when she never leaves the house and since some time now, she does not even leave her kitchen room, where also her bed and wood stove is. She does not watch TV, or read and she does only very seldom turn on the radio to listen to the Sunday Mass. Whenever I am there, a candle is lit in front of a picture of her late husband. I am highly intrigued by people and their individual life paths and personalities. She is a Pisces like me, her birthday 5 days after mine. When I lay in bed at night, I often think of her and wonder what she is thinking now.

I can see how her loss of her husband and her way of thinking about herself created her back problems. It's hard to dissolve old patterns. If you observe others carefully, you can learn so unbelievable much!

On the picture you can see her roses. When she was not able to go outside anymore, I took a picture of them when they were in full bloom and printed it out to gift her.